Memeorandum

October 26, 2012

The Upside To the Post-Clinton, Post-Racial Era

OK, I understand that as a boring middle-aged white guy I am not the target demographic for this latest 'girls just wanna have fun' Obama ad. Nor was I the target when Putin ran with a similar theme.

Still, yike. I am highly confident that Bill Clinton would have steered away from an ad playing on the suggestion that voting for him would be like having sex with him. (And if there is a merciful God in heaven, Hillary will be as wise in 2016.)

Secondly, does any Dem strategist wonder whether these young ladies have voting-age parents? Are those parents all giving this the har-de-har, or are some taking offense?

That said, I guess it is a sign of progress that we can make jokes about eighteen year old girls having sex with fifty year old (married) black men. There was a time when the whole sex and black males topic was fraught, but maybe we moved on with the then-24 year old Obama Girl. Or maybe Obama is just innatelynon-threatening. Good to know.

TomM-- it's not just you. I commented in an earlier thread that my 19yo daughter viewed the Dunham woman as a "strumpet" and a "skank" and if Obama was going to 'go there' he should have used Scarlett J or Eva L. I informed my precious 19yo--- they grow up so fast don't they-- that the Dunham advert was copied from a Russian TV advert done by by Putin earlier this year, and Putin indeed used some fine local russian talent. My daughter said, in that case Obama is a complete idiot because he can't even plagarize a lousy commercial. Like I said, precious.

I can't stop watching that Dunham ad. I look at the background. I see a black wall, a couch and a couple of throw pillows. This ad is brilliant. This is cahiers du cinema nouvelle vague stuff. Perfect casting, editing, sound. I love that line about the gay weddings. That's what's going to be sad about the Romney administration. None of those beautiful gay weddings we love to watch on Bravo. Yeah. that's it. I am going to watch it a few more times. It's the perfect minute and 3 seconds of time and space.

The entire world should stop, right now, over this Benghazi news. Hillary asked for security. Obama said "no". Two brave seals were murdered because they disobeyed the president and went to help save an ambassador. It was completely avoidable. There were plenty of people close by to help. But Obama want anyone to know he hasn't beaten terrorism.

The Pennsylvania Senate polling provides example examples of garbage versus good pollsters. The good pollsters have had Casey without water in middle of Death Valley for months. Susquehanna, Franklin and Marshal, Morning Call and even Siena have all been painting the same picture shown in today's Ras poll.

Exactly. This president was aware that US personel were under direct fire attack on US soil, and he chose to go to bed, rather than take charge of the situation, or at least order that all possible means be used to defend American lives and American soil.

rse, about 4 threads back this morning you linked your latest which I read. Can you identify the book? Is its title "Computers as Cognitive Tools" and who is the author? Does he/she expose the evils of programming children's and grownups' thought patterns to mimic computer functions which actually limits free thought or is he/she promoting it?

My understanding of the ACME "Plan to Steal Ohio" is that the absentee ballot voters are being told to go to the polls and vote again on election day. The election judges will dispute the attempt but are mandated to allow the casting of a provisional ballot. The provisional ballots have to be cross checked against the actual absentee ballots (in the event of a close election) and the period for cross checking does not expire until November 17.

The Ohio AG could obviate the strategy by declaring a strong intent to pursue voter fraud but I believe the hope is for such a decisive victory the strategy fails at the first hurdle.

My bet is it won't be close and the ACME Plan works as well as every other choice made by President Wile E Obama.

RickB-- I understand. But the tried and true vote manufacture process is having 'voters' going poll to poll and using.. uh.. nonactive registrations and voting away. If the friendly poll watchers don't request ID, whose to know? But w/o the registrations available, this tried and true manufacturing process is interrupted, and more elegant solutions with actual registered voters is required. It's a scam that can work, but it makes the scammers work harder, and certainly the number of fraudulents votes is reduced by the reduction of the overall number of Dem registrations available.

I don't get what's supposed to be so creepy about an American President borrowing a theme from a post-Soviet totalitarian to make an ad comparing voting for him to sex, starring a girl half his age with the same last name as his mother.

I want the Benghazi story to go full torque. DAMN the MSM. Can't tell you how outraged I am over this debacle. Rush had a military caller who blew in the walls on how the military-White House communication protocol operates when an ambassador is in peril or missing. Our ambassadors are direct representatives of the president, extremely 'high value'.

No way Obama wasn't aware of the critical situation at Benghazi. I want to know WHO told the SEALs to stand down and who gave the final order to not call in all available assets to save lives at the consulate. Panetta? Obama? Hillary? Military top brass? Who?

For God's sake, I've become so cynical of these people, was it Valerie Jarrett???

Dunham was born in New York City.[2] Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter of "overtly sexualised pop art", and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a photographer and designer who creates "disquieting domestic tableaux" with dolls.[3][4] Dunham's father is Protestant, and according to Dunham, a Mayflower descendant;[5][6] Dunham's mother is Jewish.[7][8] She has a younger sister, Grace, who is a model and student at Brown University and who starred in Dunham's first film Tiny Furniture.[9] As children, both Lena and Grace were babysat by photographers Sherri Zuckerman and Catherine McGann.

OldTimer- the stand down and refusal to grant Hillary request for additonal security stories have gone viral on the RightWing BlogSphere.Will the Legacy Media pick up the story? Not a chance-- until AFTER the election.

"Nevertheless, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took Castro’s side in the matter, insisting that Mr. Zelaya had to be reinstated. Mrs. Clinton stuck to that position even after a legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service found that the Honduran Supreme Court had the right to ask the military to remove the president."

If you stand against the US there is not much doubt the Obama regime will stand with you.

Old Timer:
you have hit the nail on the head. The only two people I have seen covering this story properly are Meghan Kelly and Bret Baier. Jennifer Griffin has actual on scene reporting and Charles Krauthammer is amazed that this Obama dynasty has yet to give clear concise answers.Their solution to this dilemma is to send out ambulance chaser Allred with a phony Mitt Romney story. This recent ad is disgusting and very unpresidential as is the bull-s----- remark. What president talks like this? He is a vile disgusting man whom I have zero respect for in any way.

The father - Caroll Dunham - doesn't appear to be able to paint faces. The few faces shown are...ummmm....I guess they are penises (is that the plural for penis??...I don't want to look it up) Anyway....not something you'd want over your couch.

Simple calculation. It will get a few more Flukes and Julias to the polls in Wisconsin and won't lose Obama any votes. Slice and dice, and Messina is great at it. That's why I'm sticking to Romney in the popular vote 51%-48% and Romney 270-268 in the Electoral College (with the usual rider that if Romney wins going away I'll gladly eat crow and allow Jane to take a picture of it and post the picture here).

DrF was talking to a bunch of students last year, and the topic was "there are 3 genders: women, men and fathers of daughters." One of the girls laughed and said that whenever a boy came over to pick her up for a date her dad would sit him down at the kitchen table to wait for her, he wouldn't say a word, and he would clean his gun.

Excuse the Intrade interruption, but while I remain confident that this will be an easy victory for Romney, I confess Obama's jump up to 64% on Intrade concerns me a bit. Either someone is manipulating the market (but why, it doesn't get that much attention), the bettors there know something we don't, or they are wacky/stupid/confused. This didn't bother me a few weeks ago, but I would have thought Obama's stock would have tumbled by now, 10 days before the election, post-debates, and with the polling seeming to favor Romney.

Yeah, the really striking thing about Obama is that while he has daughters he's NOT a fatherOfDaughter. We've known this for years, though. For example his comments about someone committing statutory rape with his then-pre-teen daughters were that he would run her right over to the abortion clinic and he never mentioned killing the rapist.

jimmyk, is it that intrade doesn't take bets in the US? I read that somewhere. If so, perhaps foreign bettors aren't well informed.

My Sunday column is Stand Down. The Ben Ghazi story is so disgusting I feel like showering again. What filthy horrible people in this Administration, Had I been Chas Woods I'd have decked Biden then and there.

I suspect that most Intraders are more reliant on MSM than on Ras and Gallup.

I'm ok with that as an explanation of why the JEF has been above 50% all along. But I don't see that as a reason why specifically he went up over the last few days. Maybe it is Nate Silver, who seems to be spitting into the wind harder and harder.

I think officially or legally it doesn't, but I happen to know that de facto it does (wink, wink).

Another argument against Intrade as a predictor, if you have to be "in the know" just to place a bet. It's a small number of people from who knows where, who believe who knows what, betting for who knows why, getting into the system who knows how. And yet it's supposed to be able to gauge American voters' intentions weeks and months before an election.

On one election matter prediction I am very confident: As Nov. 6th approaches, most MSM folks will have a new found affection for the Electoral College as it becomes clearer and clearer that Romney is going to get more votes nationwide.

Claudia Rosett is on Cavuto discussing UN Human Rights Council attempt to boycott American Companies doing business with and/or in Israel. Washington Examiner did article on this the other day which I posted. US rejoined this council in 2009 thanks to JEF.

why does anyone look at Intrade? What is the difference between it being wrong on Obamacare because they couldn't into the head of John Roberts and over hundred million voters casting secret ballots? Its like Larry Kudlow belief in the stock market's ability to forecast just about anything.

the bettors there know something we don't, or they are wacky/stupid/confused.

I think a lot of them are reading Nate Silver. He has been pumping Obama's chance of winning up all week, despite the fact that Romney seems to have consolidated at around 50% of the vote right now in the most reliable polls (and outside the Margin of Error for Gallup).

The only things holding Romney down from a really solid lead in the RCP average are polls that getting close to a week old now in their survey window, and the TIPP poll that has a D+7 sample, when reasonalbe people are saying D+4 is optomistic for Obama and Gallup and Ras are saing it is probably going to be R+ something.

From what I see from libs commenting on poll threads, they're putting all their faith in Intrade and Silver right now. So if there is manipulation going on that would explain why they're bothering. Can't let the troops get discouraged.

Specific references there to Walker and a new version of Cloward Piven. And using anger to get to a majority in favor of strong social welfare. And yes this did hatch off an ed site. Always.

I cannot imagine that poor parent having to hear Biden's insensitive disgusting remark on his son's anatomy. And eyes like fish is not how you want to remember the CIC with a dead child.

Yes the name of book is what I wrote. Published in 1993 based on a 1990 AERA conference. Publisher is Lawrence ERlbaum and edited by Susanne P Lajoie of McGill U and Sharon J Derry of U-Wisc-Madison.

It is darn graphic and describes the desire to create the solution trees that will create the desired pathways to the desired understanding. Once again to stay perceptual and visual, not conceptual. Not grounded in facts in Long Term Memory.

It talks about the creation of Joint Problem Solving Spaces which force the kind of collaboration together Brooksie would approve of. Knowledge is whatever artefact or solution or perspective people develop. Everything is largely social. The book even says it is based on the Soviet psychological work. It is almost 400 pages of essays with pictures and explains the importance of hypercomposition which is interesting as that is how the new E-textbooks work. Also the early uses of STELLA which is the systems thinking/systems dynamics software Peter Senge's group is pushing on schools to practice modelling based on the discredited Club of Rome's Limits to Growth.

It seems to me at this point either (i) Romney wins going away, or (ii) it's a nailbaiter. Obama winning going away is not going to happen. Given most of MSM's reporting and Team Obama's facility at targeting parts of the electorate, that's the most that could have been hoped for at this point. Noone has an excuse not to vote, not even in the blue states, because if it turns into a long count, the greater the margin Romney has in the popular vote, the better "karma" Team Romney will have in the recount fights, both in the courts and in the media.

Another thing to be thrilled about at this point is that Team Romney has the money to spend in states such as Minnesota. Even if Team Romney is just cojones busting by a late effort in Minnesota, that's fine becasue it means Team Romney has the money to Occupy Team Obama's attention in states that should be a lock for Obama by now.

"Mr. Obama's temperament is unlike anything we've seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear opposing points of view. He has inspired millions of voters of diverse ages and races, no small thing in our often divided and cynical country. We think he is the right man for a perilous moment."--"Barack Obama for President," editorial, Washington Post, Oct. 17, 2008
"Mr. Obama alienated Congress and business leaders by isolating himself inside a tight White House circle that manages to be both arrogant and thin-skinned. Too often his administration treats business as an obstacle rather than a partner."--"Four More Years for President Obama," editorial, Washington Post, Oct. 26, 2012
Two Papers in One!--II

"Republicans have been pushing hard this week to convince people that Mitt Romney is wrapping up the presidential election. Since he's not actually, well, leading, Romney partisans have relied on the idea that Romney has momentum: Even if he isn't actually ahead yet, he is certain to take a commanding lead any minute now. But that "momentum" appears to have been entirely an invention of Republican spinners."--Jonathan Bernstein, Washington Post website, Oct. 25
"Republican Mitt Romney has edged ahead of President Obama in the new Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll, with the challenger winning 50 percent of likely voters for the first time in the campaign."--Chris Cillizza, Washington Post website, Oct. 25

I have often wondered about how our brains are wired so that some guy or gal at WaPo can see this guy as some kind of wunderkind/savior to what I see as a con-man and magical mystery tour operator. That is why I continue to believe that we need to have the WaPo and NYT editorial writers to donate their brains to science so we can figure out how to swap out the red wire with the yellow wire:)

From what I see from libs commenting on poll threads, they're putting all their faith in Intrade and Silver right now.

Right, and those two things - a betting market that takes comparatively little money to move, and a highly partisan individual - are supposed to be more reliable than all the other data out there suggesting Republican turnout and enthusiasm will dwarf 2008.

But let the MSM tell voters that Obama has it in the bag. That only hurts them in the end, as Dems are harder to get to the polls, Obama is running out of money, won't be able to plug all the holes in WI MN MI PA CO etc., and Republicans can. not. wait. to cast their votes. It might even rain really hard between now and then, which is even more reason for Cousin Pookie to stay on the couch.

henry-as I explain on a fairly regular basis now won't work does not mean they will not try. And they are convincing our young people it will work. And that all of ed, k-12 and higher ed, she be group efforts at real life problem solving of these insoluble problems. That are insoluble in part because of perverse incentives arising out of statism in the first place.

That social planning doc that came out Tuesday is really angering because it talks about the magic credentials to be a planner and targeting public policy degrees and dissertations to turn every one into having a stake in pushing for transformational govt centered social and eco change.

Right, and those two things - a betting market that takes comparatively little money to move, and a highly partisan individual - are supposed to be more reliable than all the other data out there suggesting Republican turnout and enthusiasm will dwarf 2008.

There are apparently people who still believe the Ohio exit polls were more accurate than the vote tally. The two items you cite will give birth to a million conspiracy theories, and likely a few criminal acts.

I was looking at the prior thread and really disappointed in all you guys view of moderates. Geez guys. This is a tough crowd.

As for Brooks, I think he speaks for himself, and what he has is more a celebration of inconsistency than anything else. Most moderates tend to take their viewpoints from both the Liberal and Conservative tribes, and mix them in idiosyncratic ways.

AP: six vehicles were involved in the apparent chain-reaction crash, including two Las Vegas police vehicles, two civilian vehicle and two Capitol Police vehicles.
Elliott says four tow trucks were summoned. It's not clear whether anyone else was injured. Officials in Reid's office said it wasn't immediately clear where the Democratic Senator was headed, but first lady Michelle Obama is set to give a speech in Las Vegas Friday afternoon, and Reid's wife Landra was speaking at the event.

Reportedly Reid walked into local hospital and was admitted. Wonder if that's mainly because his retinue were rushing to see MOzo and caused the accident, and civilians might have been injured worse than he?